Ran FD again. It found a couple of duplicates (none of which would be associated with a website), which I moved. Plus I emptied the font caches. Did this on both machines. The MBP only displays the garbled text in the log-out link at the top right, but the text below the icons is ok. On the Mini, all text except my name is garbled.

Safe mode clears it out, but another restart screws up the text all over again. So I'm convinced this has more to do with Safari than anything else.

Safe Boot not only clears font caches but it also turns off all non-Apple fonts, and stops third party stuff from loading, like Suitcase Fusion Core.

Set Suitcase to not start at startup, also see what fonts are located in Users/you/Library/Fonts and Library/Fonts. If there are any move them out, move them to folders so you can put them back if needed. Do a Safe Boot to clear caches. Reboot back to regular. See if the problem is still there. If so check in System/Library/Fonts and see if you have any non-Apple fonts in there. Make note of any Helveticas.

Download this, it will tell you what should be in System/Library/Fonts.

Do a search on that page for 'Removing Helvetica, Helvetica Neue and Helvetica Light', it will take you to the directions for removing the Helveticas permanently. It says Leopards, but the next section covers Lions.

BTW it may not be a conflict between Helveticas, it may be a Helvetica that you activate that is corrupt in some way. I know, you ran FontDoctor, but I've found that FD is not 100% reliable, and I have found it to break fonts that it says it fixed.

It may also be a Font ID number conflict. The system is trying to use Helvetica #123456 (ex.) but that is pointing to something else.

There's a lot of chatter a/b Helvetica in most of the threads I've been reading. I don't have Suitcase as a log-in item (Fusion 4 doesn't need to be running in the background the way older versions did). But I did see several mentions of clicking the "Stop Type Core" button in Suitcase preferences.

Since I have very limited need of any of the Helveticas in my work fonts folder, I'm going to start by deleting those sets and see what happens after another safe boot sequence. Only if that doesn't help will I try messing around with the steps outlined in those two guides. But having once experienced how font problems can bring a system down, I'll take those steps only as a last resort.

Who'd a thunk it? Seems to have worked. I didn't disable the Type Core, but I deleted all non-system Helvetica sets from Suitcase. Did the safe boot, which as we've already seen, works in the short term. The litmus test was to do a regular restart next, because that's when the problem returned. In fact, before restarting I opened up a few InDesign files to make sure all my needed fonts were loading — including a file that needed Helvetica Nue — and everything was ok. After the restart, the iCloud page text was as it should be in Safari (same as in Aurora and Chrome). Hopefully, I'll have the same result with the MBP.

I know that. But I had other Helvetica fonts in my work fonts set. Nue with a bazillion variation from ultra thin to extra black and from ultra condensed to expanded. Plus another regular Helvetica and a Helvetica Condensed. Been schlepping these fonts from one system to the next for a dozen years. Those are the sets I deleted from Suitcase.

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